What is the Michelin star?

And why a tyre company started rating restaurants

Every year, a star (or a few) is born. The world waits with bated breath for the gastronomic Bible that has chefs around the world biting their fingernails. What’s with the fuss? Here’s a quick explainer:

What is a Michelin star?It is a rating handed out by the Michelin Guide to restaurants for their excellence in food.

And what is the Michelin Guide?Tyre company Michelin puts out two kinds of guides annually—Red and Green. The Red Guide, or Michelin Guide Rouge, is largely devoted to gastronomy and exists for major cities in 24 different countries of the world. The Green Guide spans a larger geographical region, including Mumbai and Kuala Lumpur, but is mostly about travel information like local procedures and driving laws. Long story short: those stars come from a tiny red book of restaurant ratings and recommendations, published by a tyre company.

Photo: David Brabyn/Corbis

What does a tyre company have to do with food?Started by Andre and Edouard Michelin in 1900, the Michelin guide is a culinary ratings compilation, originally meant to assist travellers on the road and encourage them to journey for food and explore more places. Altruistic? Not really. The guide was created to inspire customers to travel more and wear out their tyres sooner, which would eventually increase Michelin’s sales. The first edition was a 575-page alphabetical listing of towns in France and the distances between them. This was coupled with recommendations for hotels and pitstops to refuel.

How does it work?While rating restaurants, The Michelin Guide uses a star system. One star suggests ‘very good cooking in its category,’ two stars ‘excellent cooking, worth a detour,’ while three stars means ‘exceptional cuisine, worthy of a special detour.’ Stars are awarded to restaurants and not chefs.

The rating comes after evaluation by a team of inspectors who travel in complete secrecy. Michelin is highly secretive about the guide and its methods of assessment—the lives of the inspectors, have been described as ‘working for the CIA, but with better food’. When a restaurant is likely to gain or lose stars, there will be several visits by different inspectors. Restaurants already on the list are reviewed every 18 months, to make sure they still fit the Michelin bill.

Is it only about the food?Yes. While ambience and service play a role in the overall dining experience, a restaurant is awarded a star solely for the expertise in the kitchen. Case in point, Sushi Saito in Tokyo. This tiny joint doled out rolls of sushi on a wooden counter within a multi-storey car park and managed to receive a three-star rating.

How important is a star for a restaurant?Acquiring a Michelin star is a sign that you have arrived on the culinary scene. Stars bring much glory to chefs and restaurants, and have helped push new techniques of cooking to the fore, as in the case of restaurants like Noma and Gaggan. Araki, a sushi restaurant in London featured on this year’s Michelin Guide, even though national food critics largely ignored it. However, all the fame has a dark side. Downgrades (or even the threat of them) have been connected to the suicide of celebrated French chef Bernard Loiseau and even brought the notoriously tough chef Gordon Ramsay to tears.

Do any restaurants in India have a Michelin star?The Michelin Rouge does not exist in India, and hence the country has no Michelin-starred restaurants. However, chefs of Indian origin such as Atul Kochhar, Vineet Bhatia and Gaggan Anand (among others) have been awarded stars via their restaurants Tamarind and Zaika in London and Gaggan in Bangkok respectively.

How can I get my hands on the guide?Buy one! The guides are available in local bookshops and on popular e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart as well.